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Bullying negatively affected children's long-term health

Both recurrent and current bullying were associated with negative effects on mental and physical health for school children who were surveyed for 5 years, according to recent study results.

However, the negative effects of bullying on a child’s health can be minimized by a clinician’s early recognition and intervention in cases of chronic bullying.

 

Laura M. Bogart

Laura M. Bogart, PhD, of Boston Children’s Hospital, and colleagues surveyed children in the fifth, seventh and 10th grades (n=4297) at three time points in three cities.

Researchers used multivariable regressions to compare children who had experienced bullying only in the past, only in the present, both in the past and the present and who had not experienced bullying at all.

According to study results, children with both past and present bullying experiences exhibited the worst mental and physical health, greater depression symptoms and lower self-worth during the study period.

Researchers observed the health was significantly worse for children with both past and present bullying experiences, followed by children with present-only experiences, children with past-only experiences and children with no experiences.

For instance, 44.6% of children bullied in both the past and present were at the lowest decile of psychosocial health vs. 30.7% of those bullied in the present only (P=.005), 12.1% of those bullied in the past only (P<.001), and 6.5% of those who had not been bullied at all (P<.001).

“Our research shows that long-term bullying has a severe impact on a child’s overall health, and that its negative effects can accumulate and get worse with time,” Bogart said in a press release. “It reinforces the notion that more bullying intervention is needed, because the sooner we stop a child from being bullied, the less likely bullying is to have a lasting, damaging effect on his or her health down the road.”

The researchers said a clinician's early intervention would be helpful to halt the negative health effects of bullying as well as repeated interventions if bullying behavior persists. Improved, clinically tested bullying prevention tactics would increase the success of clinician-aided intervention tactics.

“There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to addressing bullying,” Bogart said. “But providing teachers, parents and clinicians with best-practices that are evidence-based could better assist those at the frontlines helping children cope with this serious problem and lessen the damage it causes.”

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.